Browsing the Broken Web: a Software Developer Behind the Great Firewall of China

troyhunt writes "While we've long known that China takes a fairly aggressive stance on internet censorship, I thought a visit to Shanghai this week would pose a good opportunity to look at just how impactful this was to software developers behind the Great Firewall of China. It turns out that the access control policies make life very difficult at all sorts of levels when accessing simple technology resources we use every day from other countries. But I also found an amazing level of inconsistency with sites and services intended to be off limits being accessible via other means. It's an interesting insight into how our developer peers can and can't work in the country with the world's largest internet population."

Comments

Just like DRM

[deciduousness]

Seems to work just like DRM. Gives the company a sense of power and usually just inconveniences the average user. The power user probably has very few issues.

4 months in Shanghai was too long

[Saphati]

I spent 4 months in Shanghai and was considering moving there. Shanghai is an amazing city. However, by the end of the 4 months I could not get out of there fast enough. Their Internet censoring/monitoring slows down your Internet connection so much it is sometimes not useable. Skype and many other programs/websites we use regularly in the west are not legal in China. Some are blocked for political reasons and other are blocked so people are forced to use local versions of the products. The local versions all have built in monitoring for the government. Almost all expats in China use VPN connections for their daily work. Hong Kong is the complete opposite. Nothing is censored there and their Internet connections are extremely fast! I can live in HK.

One acronym solution:

[LynnwoodRooster]

VPN. VPNMakers.com - $5/month, works great from all over China (including Shanghai, where I live half-time). No problem getting into corporate networks, secured websites, or even streaming Hulu/Pandora/MOG/Netflix.

Re:One acronym solution:

[LynnwoodRooster]

Having tried many free ones before I decided to pay, I can say that nearly all of them are slow, do not always work - and are not reliable at all (drop connection regularly). If you're actually developing and making money, spend a few bucks (32 RMB) and get a REAL VPN connection.

Poorly admined network

[DigiShaman]

Been to Shanghai more than I can count. Basically, the network is poorly maintained. Everything from double-NATing, poor routing, to offline DNS servers. The problem at least residential side are systemic.

Re:Poorly admined network

[LynnwoodRooster]

Been to Shanghai more than I can count. Basically, the network is poorly maintained. Everything from double-NATing, poor routing, to offline DNS servers. The problem at least residential side are systemic.

I live in Shanghai half-time (out by Qibao town, in Minhang). My apartment had poor Internet service, until I complained to China Telecom and demanded they honor the contract I had with them. Ended up I was too far from the CO to get the 3 Mbps connection I was paying for, so they pulled fiber to my apartment block and now I get a solid 8-10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up without a hitch.

Use China's laws to your advantage. If a contract is offered, accepted and paid for, then legally they HAVE to give you what you want - there is no way for them to back out or refund the money. Service has been paid for, they must provide the service regardless of cost.

Re:impactful?

[SplashMyBandit]

We (people in my country) don't use Webster's (we use the Oxford Dictionary instead as our standard - mostly). Just because a word is in Websters doesn't mean the word is accepted by the international English community. While we my countrymen will usually tolerate abominations like 'impactful', they come across as quite dissonant and are avoided by better writers and speakers. For example, the the writer could have substituted the word 'significant' for 'impactful'.

My other favourite poor-word-choice peeve is 'architected' when 'designed' is the better word to use. All these faux-formal words being made up by corporate drones when there are perfectly suitable and well accepted alternatives instead. If you have a good vocabulary you choose the simplest word to fit, not make up words to try sound enlightened or technically adept. Use of such words are jarring for those of us who have moved past the stage of complicating our prose (as you learn to do as an undergraduate in university) to the stage of ruthlessly simplifying it where we can.